an intelligent horror film

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2004)

I recently saw this film on video for the first time and was impressed by how intelligent and well-made it was. And scary to boot. The scenes where the main character wanders around London by himself, in the church where the infected priest comes after him, arms jerking and flailing, in the stairwell on the way to the top apartment, and in the tunnel when the tire was being changed on the car, each of these was terrifying in its own right. In some of the scenes, I was reminded of The Omega Man with Charlton Heston, another "zombie" film where the zombies didn't eat their victims, but used night-time to hunt down the non-zombies. Another scary film. I found myself watching 28 Days Later and thinking, this could happen. I mean, scientists could isolate a gene for aggression, rage, whatever, test it in animals, and what would happen if it escaped and crossed over into humans? I definitely thought about this film for days after I saw it.